Recently, some French historians have called for an end to the discussion of the causes and meaning of the French Revolution, declaring it to be ‘terminated’. But an occurrence that raises such fundamental philosophical and moral questions can never end. For the dispute is not only over what has happened in the past but also over what may happen in the future.

—Richard Pipes (The Russian Revolution 1899-1919 (London: Collins Harvill, 1990), xxiv.)

The object of the notes below is to argue the following:

• That the traditional Marxist conception of bourgeois revolution is—with serious consequences for both Marxists and Marxism—fundamentally flawed.

• That, this notwithstanding, Marxism retains its validity as a tool of historical enquiry. The problem is not that Marxism itself is ‘wrong’ but that it has been consistently misunderstood and misapplied by generations of Marxists, not least in the field of historiography.

• That the debate on the origin and nature of the bourgeois revolutions is no mere scholastic obscurantism but rather has, on a number of different levels, a practical and increasingly urgent relevance.

More (pdf, 211 KB): The Debate on the Bourgeois Revolution Revisited